Transcription
If you wanna learn how to get the most out of Descript, one of the most powerful AI video editing tools out there, then you've come to the right place. In this tutorial, I'll walk you through everything you need to know in order to use Descript to its fullest potential. You'll learn how to use Descript's text-based video editor and optimise your video transcript with a single click. I'll teach you how to use powerful AI tools like eye contact correction, automatic captions, green screen, and even fully automated short form content creation plus so much more. By the end of this video, you'll be able to edit your own videos like a pro, but first, we need a Descript account.
To make sure you get the best current deal, click the link at the top of this video's description to sign up for Descript. I recommend going with the Creator plan. There is a free plan for Descript, but a lot of the exciting AI tools are extremely limited on the free plan. So to get started, click on Get started here. Then in the top right, let's click on Sign up. Here, you can sign up with Google or choose a different email address here. Fill out your information here, and I'll meet you at the next step.
Once you've signed up for your account, you'll have to input your payment information. Once that's done, click on Save changes, and you're now officially signed up and subscribed to Descript. I'll click on Continue to Descript. From here, I'll click on I know where I want to start, and Descript will open a brand new project for you.
Let's navigate to Descript's home page by heading to the top left hand side and we'll click the Home button here. I'll close out of this popup. Now I'll quickly go over the difference between projects and workspaces. So the default project that Descript created for us a moment ago is housed here under Projects on the left hand side, but under Workspaces, you'll notice there's a Private workspace and then in my case Caleb's Drive Workspace. I'll click into the Private workspace first. Here, you can house your recordings, your projects, and you will be the only person that can see this workspace. But if I click on Caleb's Drive, this is a shared workspace, so if you invite any team members or any collaborators on a project, they will be able to see all the recordings and projects within the shared workspace.
Let's go back up to Projects here. I'll click into it. And then to create a new project from scratch, head to the right hand side and click on New Project. Then I'll click on Video project. Now we've arrived to the main interface you'll see while using Descript. On Name your creation, let's add something like Medics Media Demo Video. Then you can upload a file. Additionally, you can paste a video link from YouTube, record directly within Descript, and you have a couple other options here as well. For most use cases, you'll probably upload a file. I'll click on this here, and I have a preexisting demo video that I want to upload. I'll double click on this to upload it and it will be added to Descript.
Descript is now transcribing our video file, and you'll see this pop up appear. Our demo video is called Descript Demo Video.mp4. It recognises that there's one speaker in the video, which is me. Then Descript wants to assign a speaker name to that person. I'll click on Speaker Name and then we can type a name. I'll type my own name, which is Caleb, and then I can add Caleb as a speaker. I'll click on this. Then once I'm done, I'll click on Done. We'll let Descript to finish transcribing the video. Now, on the left-hand side our transcription is complete. As you can see, Descript has assigned Caleb as the speaker for the scene, and we can now begin editing.
Now that our transcription is done, it may feel intimidating on where you want to start. The easiest way to understand how Descript works is by understanding two fundamental principles. The first is the transcript video editor. This works the same way that Google Docs or Microsoft Word would work. You can highlight text in your video and delete it to make a cut. Then on the left-hand side, you have your scenes. Here, you can see that we have one scene, and this works similarly to a software like Microsoft PowerPoint or even Google Slides. I'll go back to my transcript and press Ctrl + Z to undo the cut. And now let's preview our demo video. I'll go down to the Play button here at the bottom and I'll click Play. "Hey, everyone. I'm Caleb and welcome to the show. Hey, everyone. I'm Caleb and welcome to the show."
As you can see, I wasn't a fan of my first delivery on the intro line, so I have an outtake in the beginning here that I need to cut out. If we were to do this manually, again I could highlight the text and then delete it, and now if I press Play. "Hey, everyone. I'm Caleb and welcome to the show." The outtake has been completely removed. But I wanna show you an incredibly exciting AI feature within Descript. So to start, I'll press Ctrl + Z on my keyboard to bring back the messed up intro from the beginning of the demo video. To start using the AI tools within Descript, head to the right-hand side and click on Underlord. Here, you'll find an entire host of incredibly exciting AI tools for you to try out. We'll start this section of the video by checking out the Sound good suite. Here we have Edit for clarity, Studio Sound, Remove filler words, Remove retakes, Shorten word gaps, and Add chapters. Edit for clarity is the tool we'll be demoing in this video because it combines other AI tools like remove filler words and remove retakes into one easy-to-use tool. Let's click on it here. We can change the edit intensity from low, medium, and heavy. I'll bring it to medium. Before I click submit, let's preview our demo video one more time to hear how it sounds without any changes. I'll go down here and click on Play. "Hey, everyone. I'm Caleb and welcome to the show. Hey, everyone. I'm Caleb and welcome to the show. Today, I wanna talk about how AI is changing the game when it comes to video editing." As you can see, I stumble across the script saying um, having unnaturally long pauses, and overall this could appear a lot more professional.
Let's go back to the right hand side and click on Submit to see what changes Underlord makes. Underlord will work on your video's transcript and it will provide suggestions on how to make your video flow a lot better. Here you can see that Underlord understood that the first take of my video was incorrect, so it suggests to remove it. I can approve this change by clicking on the Accept edit button or I can deny the change. In this case, I'll approve it. Here, further into the video, you can see I said filler words like um. Underlord was able to find all of these within my transcript and it recommends removing them. I'll approve this change again by clicking on the green check mark. I'll do it again for the next one as well. I don't feel that I need any additional changes to my video, so I'll deny these other two changes. With that done, let's click on Done. And let's watch through our demo video again. To preview from the beginning, I'll click on the first word in the transcript and then I'll click on Play. "Hey, everyone. I'm Caleb and welcome to the show. Today, I wanna talk about how AI is changing the game when it comes to video editing." You can see Underlord did a great job of removing the original intro, cutting out my filler words like um, and making the video appear a lot smoother. I was able to do all of this in just a few clicks.
Now let's listen to the audio on our demo video here. I'll click on Play again. "Hey, everyone. I'm Caleb and welcome to the show." This video was recorded using an on-camera microphone. The audio doesn't sound very professional, but fortunately with Underlord we're able to fix that in just a few seconds. With Underlord open, click on Studio Sound. It will apply Studio Sound to our video. Now with Studio Sound applied, let's go back to the top of our transcript and click on the first word to preview from the beginning and then I'll click on Play to hear how the difference sounds. "Hey, everyone. I'm Caleb and welcome to the show. Today, I wanna talk about how AI is..." Your results with Studio Sound will vary depending on the nature of your audio. The better your audio is, the more AI can improve it. But we went from having a very echoey non-full sound to our video sounding like it was recorded on a professional microphone.
Now let's check out another really cool AI feature within Underlord. I'll go to the top right hand side and click on Underlord and we'll now take a look at the Look good tool suite. If we zoom in on my face here, you can see that I'm not actually looking at the camera lens, which is a very common mistake, but with Underlord, we're able to fix that in a few clicks. Let's click on Eye Contact here and the effect will apply to our video. Now if we click on the top of our transcript again to preview from the beginning, let's zoom in on the video and see what the difference looks like. "Hey, everyone. I'm Caleb and welcome to the show. Today, I wanna talk about how AI is changing the game when it comes to video editing." As you can see, I'm making eye contact with the camera lens and it looks pretty natural. Again, your results with this tool will vary depending on the nature of your video quality and how easy it is for the AI to track the eyes on your face.
Now, going back to Underlord on the top right hand side, let's scroll down slightly and click on Green screen. A green screen effect will be applied to our video file. And just like that, we've removed the background from our video entirely. If you're giving a presentation, you have a slideshow deck, or you have any media that you need to display behind you, you're able to do it very quickly within Descript. Now, let's go back to Underlord one more time. And if I scroll down to Look good, there are a few other options. We have Centre active speaker, which will keep the active speaker in the centre of the video's frame. You can generate an image using AI, and now you can blur the speaker's background as well. This gives you a lot of different options when it comes to changing how your video looks.
Let's go back to the top right hand side and click on Underlord one more time. Now I wanna get into scenes and layouts, which is another exciting part of Descript. We covered this briefly in the beginning, but to remind you, on the left hand side we have a scene list here. We currently have one scene. And in our transcript, a scene is marked with a slash. To create a new scene, let's find a natural gap between our paragraphs. I'll click into the end of the paragraph here. And then just like in a Google Doc, I'll press Enter on my keyboard and then I'll type a slash. On the left-hand side, you'll see a new scene appear. If we want to change the layout of this scene, let's go to the right-hand side and click on Scene. And then under Scene Layout, let's click on See more layouts. Now we have a tonne of different options to choose from. Descript provides you with a default gallery here. You can see they have one for a screen recording, a zoom on the speaker, a slightly different screen recording layout and more of a portrait format. And if you don't like any of the default layouts, you can click the back button here next to Descript and you have different layout packs to choose from. Again, there are so many of these. And you can even create your own layout pack based on your brand's fonts, colours, logos, and typical scenes you like to use. I'll scroll up and click on the Berlin carrot dark layout pack. And then I'll go for this screen recording here that puts me in the left-hand side as a small circle. Let's click on this. And it has now applied the layout to our second scene. Here in the Preview panel, you can see that we have a transparent background and me in the corner with the green screen effect applied in a circle cutout. To change the transparent media, let's click into it here, and then click on Add media. You can add from your computer, your project files. And similar to before, you can even record within Descript. In my case, I'll click on Add from computer. And I have a demo screen recording I want to apply to the background. I'll double click on that to open and it will upload into my project.
Now in my transcript, I wanna go a little bit into my first scene so I can see the transition between scene one and scene two. I'll click right here, and now let's click Play. "And save you so much time. And that's why I'm so excited to share everything I've learned about Descript. In this video, I'll break down everything I've learned and how it'll save you time on your next video editing project." As you can see, there's a natural transition between our scenes. If we want to change the transitions, here on the Scene tab with it still open, you can see that we can change our in and our out transitions. For example, I can go from smart transition to a blur. And just like before, I'll go back into our first scene and click Play. "And save you so much time. And that's why I'm so excited to share." There you can see that there was a blur transition between our first and second scene. You're also free to change your layout at any time. I'll go back up here and click on See more layouts. And I can change it to this more portrait screen recording format simply by clicking on it. Go back into my first scene, then click on Play. "And save you so much time. And that's why I'm so excited to share everything I've learned about Descript." As you can see, I was able to completely transform the layout of my video and it took hardly any time at all.
Before we move on, let's take a look at layers. When you're clicked into the Scene tab here on the right-hand side, at the bottom, you'll notice a small Layers tab. Here we have our script, which is our main background video that we started with in the beginning, and then we have our screen recording demo. On the right-hand side, you have a few different options. You can lock a layer, you can hide a layer by clicking on it, you can mute a layer, and you can solo a layer. Every piece of content that you add to your video project within a scene will be seen as a layer by Descript. This can be anything from media you import from your computer, content you record within Descript, or other things like captions we'll learn about now.
On the right-hand side, click on Captions here. And you'll see this list appear that contains a bunch of different pre-made caption styles. Let's scroll up and click on the Karaoke classic caption style. Once I click on that, it will apply to my video. And you'll see my text in my transcript has a blue underline. That means that this content within my transcript is appearing in my video's captions. Here in the Preview panel, you'll see my captions appear here. Within the Preview panel, you do have a few different options for changing your caption's colours and fonts, but to have more control, navigate to the right-hand side and click on Layer. You'll have an entire panel now dedicated to changing your caption style. And if you want even more control over how your captions look. Underneath Style, click on these two sliders. Here, we can change our fill colour, we can add a black border, which I'll do by clicking on the +. You can change the background and the colour of your active word. I'll click onto this blue here and I'll go for a deeper blue colour like this one here. Now let's click out of this, and we can see that our captions now stand out from the video background a bit more. Let's click on the x button to exit out. And back on our Preview panel, we can actually see our captions. Now let's see how this actually looks when it's animated on screen. "And that's why I'm so excited to share everything I've learned about Descript." We now have fully automated captions on our video, but what happens if something in our transcript is spelled wrong?
When Descript is transcribing our video, initially it's bound to get some things wrong. It can be anything like brand names or speaker names, but correcting these issues is super easy. As you can see here, instead of Descript, it transcribed as DS Script. To fix this and also fix it within our captions, highlight the incorrect word, click on Correct, and then simply type in the correct spelling. I'll type Descript here. If the error only occurs once in the video, then just click Correct. But if it happens multiple times, you can click Correct all. In my case, it only happens once, so I'll click Correct. And as you can see here, it's changed from DS Script to Descript. And you'll see the change reflect here in the captions as well.
Another exciting feature that I wanna share with you is within Descript, if you say something wrong in your video, you can actually use AI dubbing to completely fix it. If I scroll up slightly in my transcript, here, I can find this section that says, "Back in the day if you made a mistake while exporting your content." During my recording, I meant to say, "Recording your content." Now, if I wanna fix this with AI dubbing, I'll highlight the line that I want to change. Then I'll click on Regenerate. Then I'll type in the correct wording. In this case, I'll change exporting to recording. Then I'll click on Regenerate. Then I'll need to record myself saying this statement. This will train the speaker within Descript and authorise its use. Go ahead and record this statement here. I've now recorded the statement and I'll click Submit. Descript will authorise the speaker, the speaker's been authorised and it's now regenerating the part of the script that I want to correct. Let's go back slightly in our transcript here, and let's hear how that sounds. "If you made a mistake while recording your content, you either had to manually reshoot or spend hours." As you can see, within just a few seconds I was able to transform that line and correct it directly within Descript instead of having to go back and manually reshoot the entire video.
Next, let me scroll down and go towards the end of the transcript here. Now we understand the transcript video editor, we understand scenes, transitions, layouts, AI tools, and captions, but to fully master Descript, we need to head to the bottom left hand side and click on Show timeline. Here we have a traditional video editing timeline that includes waveforms, layers, cuts, and we can expand the timeline to get a better look at it by bringing our mouse to the top here, clicking and dragging to make the timeline larger. All of the cuts, all of the layers, all of the changes that we've made to our video appear here in our timeline. Starting from the top, we see our captions layer, we see our screen recording demo, we see our base video and our transcript, and our video's audio. To fine tune and make refined cuts within your video, I would recommend doing that within the timeline editor. The transcript video editor is a great way to get your video edited quickly, but to fully set the pacing and fine tune your video, again, I would do that within the timeline editor. To zoom in on your timeline, hold down Ctrl, and scroll your mouse wheel up. Then at the bottom here, we can move this slider. And unnatural pauses in your video are indicated with an ellipses here. To adjust the pause on that video, grab the end of it and then drag it to close it down. Now on my play head, I can click at the top of the timeline here to go back a little bit. And then I can click on Play to see how that cut looks. "So much time. And that's why I'm so excited to share everything I've learned about Descript." Let's take a look at our toolbar here before moving on. So we can change the playback speed of our video, we can jump to a chapter marker. We have some tools here. We have a select tool, a blade, a range and slip tool, and then a hand tool. To close the timeline and go back to the view we had before, just click on Hide timeline here.
Now let's jump into another exciting Underlord AI feature, this being creating short clips and highlight reels. Let's go to the right-hand side and click on Underlord again, and let's scroll down to Repurpose. Here we can create clips, create a highlight reel, find highlights, and even translate our video. To start, let's click on Create clips. This allows Underlord to pick your most viral-worthy moments and create clips that pop. Essentially Underlord will scan through your entire video. Let's say you have a podcast or a training seminar. It'll analyse your entire video and create short form clips for you to share on social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, or Facebook. This can save you so much time. To start, let's change our number of clips from 5 to 2. I'll change the clip duration from 30 seconds to 10 seconds. Then I'll find a layout that I want to go with. Check them out here, and I think I'll go for this layout here. You can provide a topic so Underlord understands the goal of your content a little bit more. Let's say, for example, you have a comedy podcast. You can tell Underlord that you want it to find the funniest moments within your podcast. It'll go into analysing your video with that goal. And when Underlord is done, you'll have funny clips to share on your social media platforms. In my case, I'll just click on Submit and Underlord will go through and analyse your video. Here you can see it's created a clip and it even includes a virality score. In this case, it provided this clip with a 4.8, meaning that this clip has a good chance of going viral online. Now let's click on Done.
And then at the top of our project, this is a good time to understand compositions. When we created our project, we also had to create a composition within it, and that's the space we've been operating in throughout this entire video. If we want to change our composition, navigate to the top and click this drop down here. Then the clips that Underlord created for us are in a different composition. Let's click on the new clip composition that Underlord created for us. And you can see here on the left-hand side that we have two new scenes created. Let's see what Underlord created for us. "Back in the day, if you made a mistake while exporting your content, you either had to manually reshoot or spend hours manually video editing." As you can see, it centred me in the frame, it provided automatic captions, and it edited the video for us. If you have hours and hours of video content, this is a great way to save a tonne of time. Another way to switch between your compositions, if you navigate to the right-hand side while clicked into project, you can see your compositions listed here. To go back to our main composition, let's click on the Medics Media Demo Video composition, and now we're back.
Now let's go back to Underlord on the right-hand side. Let's scroll back down to Repurpose, and here we can create a highlight reel. This will create a new composition with all of your best moments. If you're not looking for viral short form clips, this is a good way to condense an hour-long recording down to 1 or 2 minutes. Let's briefly touch over a few different features that you'll find within Underlord. As I mentioned before, you can find highlights and even translate your video into other languages. This includes your transcript, captions, and audio. Under Publish, we have some other AI scriptwriting tools. We can Draught a title, Summarise, Draught show notes, and even Draught a YouTube description. We have a couple other draughts for social and blog posts. Underneath Write, we have Brainstorm, Write a script, Write an outline, and Rewrite. Now, you can do all of these tasks within another AI companion like ChatGPT, but it's cool that you're able to keep everything within Descript.
To showcase some other tools, let's go to the right-hand side and click on Record. Once here, you can record directly into your script. You can choose your camera, your microphone, and if you wanna share a screen. You can even record with others. Let's say you're doing a training or a podcast, you can record that podcast directly within Descript. Let's now click on Elements. Here, you can add text, placeholder media, shapes, dynamic text, waveforms, progress bars, annotations, overlays, and even frames. There are tonnes of different options for things that you can add on top of your video. And it makes tasks like motion graphics that are typically done in a software like Adobe After Effects incredibly simple in Descript.
Now, let's go to the last option here at the bottom. Clicking on this will open up our stock video and audio library. You have video, GIFs, and images here to choose from. And then if I click on Audio, you can preview and add different stock music to your project. Now we've created our video, we've added captions, we've created short form clips, let's talk about exporting our video. Let's go to the right-hand side and click on Publish. If we want to publish this directly to somewhere like YouTube, we can do that here or we can click on Export. Within Video, we can choose to export right now it's our current composition, but we can change this to scene, a line break, or all compositions. We can change the resolution. Right now, it's set to 720p, but I could make this 4K if I wanted to. We could change the quality, which is currently set to medium. I'll change this to high. We can configure our audio, metadata, and advanced settings as well. Here at the top, you can change your audio, GIF, and timeline settings. But in particular, I wanna call out the Transcript and Subtitle menus. Let's click in the Transcript, and here we can export our transcript by itself. Right now, it's set to export as a Microsoft Word document. I'll click into this, but we can change the format here as well if I wanted to. Then under Subtitles, we can export our subtitles as an SRT or VTT format. Let's close this and go back to video. Once you're ready to export your video, click on Export and your video will begin exporting here.
Now to go back to the main dashboard, navigate to the top left-hand side and click on the Home icon here. Lastly, let's click on Learn Descript. Now with the fundamentals that you've learned from this crash course video, you can check out the official trainings provided by Descript. These are also short crash course style videos about specific topics, and I'd encourage you to check them out. If you have any other questions about Descript, leave them down in the comments. I try to read and respond to as many as I can. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.